This is an open letter to Senator Kerry specifically, but also anybody else who has ever run for public office and is endorsing Senator Obama for President.
In just a few hours voting begins in 22 states, and a lot of people are treating Tuesday as a sporting event. That's fine, and I have no problem with that. I tend to treat the primary elections like a sporting event as well, at least on some level, and this is like the AFC & NFC Championship games all rolled into one (sorry, saving the Super Bowl metaphor for November).
Most people here seem to be poll junkies and armchair pundits in some fashion, and we spend a lot of our time promoting and predicting and hoping and even sometimes bashing candidates and those in office. Sometimes it seems like we're an over-sized version of Meet the Press.
But unlike the Sunday morning talk shows, we don't have staffers to help us frame our questions or years of interviewing experience. We have questions, but sometimes it seems like the answers or statements we get are framed just like they would be for a television audience.
I'm directing this to you, Senator Kerry, because you've been an outstanding advocate for Barack Obama in this campaign, but also because you were the Democratic candidate in 2004 and you've been through a Presidential campaign from start to finish. But if you can, just for a few minutes, take off your Senator hat and give us a little bit of insight into what's happening in this campaign.
A lot of people, myself included, feel like the Obama campaign is something special that only comes around once every three or four generations or so. It doesn't really feel like a campaign to a lot of us. It feels like a moment in history... a passage from one era to the next. It feels like there's something intangible happening that's going to shape our future and our children's future into something different, something better.
You were one of the first Senators to endorse any candidate in this campaign, and I have to wonder why that is? Do you, as a colleague of Senator Obama, feel the same things that we out here in the trenches feel? I know it's not exactly the type of question Chris Matthews or Wolf Blitzer would ask, but it's something that I want to know, and something I think is important for everyone to know. Does it feel as special for you, as someone who has been there and done that, as it does for us? And more importantly, why?
It's easy for us to get caught up in a movement like this, but our power is limited to our strength in numbers. I'm not trying to imply anything by this, but my investment in this campaign is much, much different than yours.
My voice is small, and only carries weight when joined by thousands of others, but your voice has weight behind it that very few will ever know. It's not a criticism, just a fact that you can reach thousands more in a single speech than I can in two weeks of phone-banking. At the same time, you're a Senator, and the political stakes are a lot higher for you than they are for the rest of us.
That's why I want to know, are you feeling what I'm feeling? How is this different from your campaign four years ago, and what is it about Senator Obama that made you choose to endorse someone so much earlier than most everyone else?
And in the off-chance you actually see this middle of the night diary, thank you. Thank you for supporting Barack Obama, thank you for running a tough campaign four years ago, and thank you for the outstanding work you've done as a United States Senator.